Best weather site

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JasonC

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Jun 13, 2011
135
Macgregor 26M Fredericksburg
Hat is the best weather site for sailing, I went out today and it was only suppose to be 10-15. It was blowing like hell on the lower Potomac, had to be good 20-25 and 3 foot waves.
 
catsailor

catsailor

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Jan 10, 2009
590
PDQ 32 Deale, MD
JasonC said:
Hat is the best weather site for sailing, I went out today and it was only suppose to be 10-15. It was blowing like hell on the lower Potomac, had to be good 20-25 and 3 foot waves.
Click to expand

NOAA said small craft advisory? Sure, gusts over 20 knots.
 
Stu Jackson

Stu Jackson

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Feb 26, 2004
22,776
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
Whenever someone asks a question that includes the phrase: "What's the BEST"...something, I'm always reminded of my mother: "This girl would be the BEST for you..." She never, ever nailed it. OTOH, some of my choices she would have rejected, and I should have, too. :):):)

As far a weather is concerned, I've found that reading the forecasts helps some, but keeping my head out of the boat helps a LOT more. Sometimes local conditions do not dictate the overall patterns. F'rinstance, it's always windier in the estaury than it is on The Bay.
 
justsomeguy

justsomeguy

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Feb 20, 2011
7,993
Island Packet 35 Tucson, AZ/San Carlos, MX
My arthritis seems to be the best barometer of all.
That, and a set of eyes and ears.
I do like wunderground.com, and used to play Ultimate with the guy that started the site, Jeff Masters. Jeff used to fly through hurricanes for research purposes!
 
FastOlson

FastOlson

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Apr 8, 2010
1,952
Ericson Yachts Olson 34 28400 Portland OR
P

Piotr

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Dec 6, 2010
848
MacGregor 25 Rock Hall, MD
I stopped believing in forecast after my first sail on M25 (6 hours from the CD-Canal to Rock Hall). It was supposed to be 5-10 kts and was 15-20 sustained with gusts to 25 kts. Now I'm using this site as a guide, but a GUIDE only.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/cbofs/wind_forecast.shtml

In terms of weather - well, I distinctly remember huddling on the boat with a downpour and litghtning pounding all around us about a month ago, and my wife saying :"Relax! there is still only 40% chance of showers and 20% of thunderstorms for another 3 hours!"
 
centerline

centerline

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Mar 20, 2012
3,983
Cal 34-III, MacGregor 25 Salem, Oregon
I also like the www.wunderground.com site.... it has always been accurate enough, but you do have to keep in mind that its only a prediction of what you may encounter and not a promise of what its going to be.
I have never been disappointed by getting more wind that predicted, but its downright irritating to be expecting a fair amount of wind for an exciting day of sailing and not have enough to change out the air in the cockpit....
 
anchorclanker

anchorclanker

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May 27, 2012
1,152
Oday 222 Beaver Lake, Arkansas
The government owns all the equipment, probably 95% of the radars, plus all the AWOS, Buoys, Weather Satellites, observation aircraft, weather balloons, and they have NOAA collect it all and run it through huge supercomputers. Everyone else is just re-publishing the same crud you can get directly from NOAA.

I have recently found on NOAA, a link to offshore weather buoys operated by NOAA. Some only give wave height, but many also give water and air temp, wind speed and wind direction including gusts, wave height, period and direction, barometric pressure and dew point.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

For local current conditions, updated every 60 seconds, you can call up a local AWOS.
 
Sumner

Sumner

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Jan 31, 2009
5,254
Macgregor & Endeavour 26S and 37 Utah's Canyon Country
My choice is what Geoff has put together....

http://www.geoffschultz.org/weather_map.php

Find your location on the map and it will then let you choose a number of options. A number of them have been listed above, but he has done the work for you and you can use them without having to go to different ones and putting in your location.

Try it a little and see what you think,

Sum

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Our Endeavour 37

Our MacGregor 26-S Pages

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Mac-Venture Links
 
D

doehunter

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Sep 26, 2010
808
Macgregor 1993 26S Houston
I think all of the above is better than nothing. Seems like it's always windier than the predictions though. Never the other way around.
If I'm going to be spending the night, I listen to the vhf. we get local real time wind and wave heights and the local predictions been as good as anything else so far.
 
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